Clipboard Fix

Last week my clipboard (cut and paste function) would no longer allow me to post anything but plain text, across all programs. I searched high and low and had a really hard time finding a solution to the problem. Finally I found it, after many red herrings, deep down on a message board somewhere. (Notably, they all appeared to be from March 2012 and later so this was pretty recent.) I apologize to that amazing message board because I can’t find it again.  So I’m posting the issue/solution in hopes of helping someone else if needed! I am using as tags all the search terms I used….clearly they were not the right ones but now they will work for you

So the problem — clipboard was only pasting plain text, lost all other functionality and choices for pasting. Turns out this was caused by a recently downloaded Skype program called “click to call.” Uninstall that program and you should be good to go. If you get angry about the days you’ve lost and uninstall Skype altogether too, well let’s just say you wouldn’t be the first person.

Good luck!

Favorite Apps: NoteTaker HD

I supercommute to work. At least that is the term I read for it in this article in BusinessWeek last month, and apparantly 3% of all professionals (in New York) (might) do it. So it’s not that weird! Basically it means I fly to a different city to work (Chicago), stay for the week, and fly home for weekends (Iowa). Though I’m also lucky enough to work from home every other week.

So – I have a wardrobe in both places and computers in each place, but I was carrying all these notebooks with me all the time. It was ridiculous. I did it because I’m a writer. Not as in, writing content (I do that too), but as in, obsessing over pen style and color, finding just the right textured paper, and then note taking like there is no tomorrow. I’m the girl who starts a sheet over when I make a mistake. Who got teased in high school by people turning around and putting a mark on my page, because it would make my blood boil and isn’t that just so funny. I like taking multiple pens and highlighters to a meeting and keeping things organized on the page. So it was hard to give that up.

But I’m also the girl with a bad back. And carrying all those notebooks on a plane was just not working out. So I got the iPad and made a true effort to go paperless. Key to the effort was the first app I downloaded, NoteTaker HD. With a stylus I can take notes and give into my desire to write write write, while also staying light light light. There are various colors and thicknesses of ink to choose from (including highlighters!) and I can quickly PDF a page and email it to myself or others. It also has a “zoom” feature where a box highlights the area you are writing on but you do all the writing down in the bottom. This means you can control how it looks much better than trying to write small on the whole page (you can do that too). I can keep files in notebooks just like the old days, only without the shoulder burden. I love it and highly recommend it. I also recommend keeping a few styluses around — I have one at each office and one for my purse. 

I have, admittedly, started to backslide a little. I found some perfect graph paper, and these Bic Mark-It ultra-fine markers make just too perfect a combination. But I try to limit my real writing to to-do lists or other things that make sense front and center on my desk. And I can carry a few pages without killing my back, right?